


“Loaded” and Yorkie Bars

by Ygern



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 13:36:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16347710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ygern/pseuds/Ygern
Summary: I have questions about Hathaway.





	“Loaded” and Yorkie Bars

**Author's Note:**

> I'm busy writing the next chapters for my Series A DISQUISITION OF DOMESTICITY; and I got stuck on a couple of things in "Canon" _Lewis_ and I'd really like to hear your opinions because the answers are not clear to me.

There's a lot about Hathaway that remained a mystery at the end of _Lewis_. This is partly by design: a character that remains somewhat opaque and unexplained is more interesting than one where every facet of their personality has been forensically laid bare (like on a sitcom or soapie). This would have been very deliberate on the part of the show-runners especially as there was very little that was mysterious about the main character Robbie Lewis, the character of Lewis has been almost completely laid bare before the show even started thanks to his years as Morse's side-kick.

There's another reason why the show writers may have avoided it: in _The Moonbeams Kiss the Sea_ , Laura Hobson says something along the lines of labelling someone doesn't really explain them or help you understand everything about them. She's talking about the (possibly autistic) artist Philip in that episode; but it applies just as much to anyone. Labels wouldn't have helped the narrative. The series _Lewis_ was unlikely to have been better by the production team electing to nail a particular sexual orientation onto Hathaway.

Nevertheless, Hathaway's sexuality was obliquely the focus of the episode _Life born of fire_ , (an episode I thought was rather on the melodramatic and muddled side, but that's not the point of this post). Throughout the series Hathaway is only ever romantically linked with women, although these encounters are characterised by their varying degrees of disaster and awkwardness rather than by convincing the viewer that James Hathaway is completely heterosexual. However Hathaway's putative sexuality wouldn't have even had a mention in _Life born of fire_ were it not something that was decidedly unclear. I don't think that this came about because Hathaway can quote poetry and wears baby-pink and powder-blue ties and has a fondness for lavender socks and shirts. The question came about because, at least in earlier seasons, Hathaway has an enormous crush on Lewis.

Having a crush on someone of the same sex doesn't make you gay of course, and one can be attracted to someone without being sexually attracted to them. Interestingly enough, in a podcast interview Clare Holman (the actress playing Dr Laura Hobson) gave at roughly the time that the last ever episode of Lewis was being broadcast, she referred to Hathaway and Hobson as having both being in love with Lewis and to a degree competing for his attention in the earlier seasons. Although the tone of the interview was light-hearted, there was nothing to suggest that she was trying to be funny or sensationalist when she said this. So it seems that even though there is no explicit referencing of this in any of the episodes, this was apparently understood by the cast: Hathaway was in love with Lewis to one degree or another.

The most direct statement of Hathaway's feelings for Lewis are in the Season 5 “If you go, I go” line, a line regularly referenced in fan-fic as it is (quite correctly I think) identified as the most explicit Hathaway ever gets in telling his heterosexual friend and boss what he means to him. He follows it up with “Who else would understand me?” That probably is the basis for Hathaway's loyalty to Lewis: Lewis is probably the first person to accept him as he is, and even enjoy his Tourette's-like propensity for punctuating every conversation with trivia and literary allusions. It's no small thing to a man who didn't fit in anywhere, not his childhood home, not the seminary, not among other policemen until he gets partnered with Lewis. Lewis clearly isn't at all threatened by Hathaway's ability to read ancient Greek and produce instant treatises on an eclectic range of subjects. The line is also a biblical quote (Ruth 1:16) which is all about loyalty and devotion. It's not however, romantic. That would fit: whatever Hathaway's sexuality is, he knows that Lewis is straight; hence his constant shepherding of Lewis towards Laura Hobson. We see Hathaway working more on Lewis's relationship with Laura than we ever see him working on any of his own, from talking Lewis through cooking a dish for dinner to literally saving the day in the final episode when Lewis is teetering on the brink of permanently sabotaging his relationship with Laura. 

The indirect evidence of Hathaway's devotion to Lewis are in things such as his detailed observation of Lewis, his constant smiles of approval or humour or mirth aimed solely at Lewis, his open admiration for him (“He's a bloody genius”) and his frequent displays of above-and-beyond levels of loyalty (working through the night on a mere hunch of Lewis's; the after-hours helping Lewis sift through mountains of dubious paperwork on the unlikely chance it will have evidence relating to the death of Lewis's wife), not to mention his habit of hanging out with his boss in the evenings, something that Lewis had to be ordered to do by Morse.

Of course none of this definitively tells us anything about Hathaway's sexuality, only that he is clear on his boss's sexuality. Some people have interpreted Hathaway's seemingly permanent single status as asexuality or aromanticism; however I think this is unlikely – not impossible, but unlikely – given his admittedly rare and abortive romantic or sexual interactions with characters on the show. He's also not gay: his messed up religiously-influenced attitudes of the past notwithstanding, present-day adult Hathaway is not likely to be trying to convince himself that he is straight if he is not. Liv Nash, Scarlett Mortmaigne and Fiona McKendrick are all women that Hathaway has felt some level of attraction to. I'm not sure that Zoë Kenneth should be included in this list i.e. someone Hathaway is genuinely attracted to, as I think that she is more someone he feels he can bond with over their shared grief at the death of Will. However, let's include her in the list seeing as it is a fairly short one. I think it's worth having a look to see what if anything we can learn from his interactions with these four women.

Coincidentally, there are two episodes where Lewis completely loses his temper with Hathaway and orders him off a case, and they mark low points in their working and personal relationships – and both of them are episodes where Hathaway is involved in some level with a woman. Conventional romance and Hathaway are not a positive combination. 

Anyway, I think a stronger case could be made for demisexuality: attraction dependant on a strong emotional connection, gender being largely irrelevant. That could certainly explain why his initial flustered delight in Liv Nash ( _The Soul of Genius_ ) turns into courteous disinterest the moment she admits to withholding information from him. (Hathaway of all people ought to be forgiving of this, but he is seemingly incapable of it). It also would explain his otherwise misconceived one-night stand with Scarlett Mortmaigne in _The Dead of Winter_ seeing as they were best friends as children. It would also allow for him to develop strong feelings for Robbie in spite of knowing that they would never be returned.

The Fiona McKendrick incident ( _Point of Vanishing_ ) is one that leaves me scratching my head. I'm going to assume that more of the character or the relationship was written and ended up on the cutting room floor because is it comes across as the most pointless and clumsily written insertion ever: we are told (by Laura) that the relationship exists (or existed, past tense) otherwise all of us, including Robbie Lewis who is supposed to be Hathaway's good friend, would have missed it, and then Robbie basically forces Hathaway to go and – well, it isn't clear at the end of the episode – see if she'll have pity-sex with him one last time? Exchange recipes?  
This is compounded by the fact that Lewis, (normally a kind and generous man) pretty much calls Fiona's integrity into question within seconds of the character's introduction in the episode, insinuating that she has special connections to get her where she has gotten at such a young age. Hathaway also implies a little later that Fiona walks roughshod over people (including himself) to get what she wants. After this trashing of her character by both of the show's protagonists; it remains a mystery as to why Lewis would try to push James back in her direction, even for just one night.  
The implication of the episode is that James is seriously hurt by the abrupt end of a meaningful relationship when his girlfriend sensibly allows career advancement to take precedence over her private life. It doesn't work because exactly zero screen time is given to the whole relationship from start to finish. Lewis is as surprised as we are. It's literally the definition of _deus ex machina_ , and to what end is not clear. I sincerely hope the inserted relationship wasn't an attempt to give Hathaway a case of the Not-Gays but I rather fear that it was as it isn't clear what else they hoped to accomplish with it. (see below for Not-Gays explanation).

This is an actual snippet of the script: 

HATHAWAY: What's Fiona got to do with anything?  
LEWIS: Well, you brought her up.  
HATHAWAY: No I didn't.

Yeah, me either.

Scarlett Mortmaigne _The Dead of Winter_ has one very important hook to attract Hathaway – they shared their childhood and evidently were close friends and playmates, alongside the tragic Paul Hopkiss, as young prepubescent children. But one-night stand aside, there's never any sense that James would be stupid enough to agree to be her secret lover during her marriage of convenience. She rejects James and their shared past at the end of the episode (“You were never one of us”) but not before he has repudiated all at Crevecoeur (“I'm a policeman, not a member of your staff”). The loss of the relationship with her and everybody else from his childhood is no less notable than the new question marks that hang over Hathaway's younger years – questions that never get answered: was Hathaway also abused as a child, was he aware of the abuse going on, why did his parents leave the estate when he was twelve? Was this why his parents left so abruptly?

As far as Zoë Kenneth in _Life Born of Fire_ goes, this is a problematic episode (much as I hate to use that word). For one Zoë Kenneth isn't, as far as I can make out, actually a Trans person. The way the story is presented, Feardorcha Phelan was cisgendered and gay i.e. not Trans at all. The sex-change operation was a desperate attempt to save his relationship with his boyfriend Will under the influence of the fanatical religious splinter group called "The Garden" that utterly condemned gay couples. Zoë Kenneth's fury and murderous rampage is predicated on the fact that her “sacrifice” failed: it didn't save the relationship and may have pushed Will towards suicide. This is a rather implausible story in modern Oxford (although sadly not unheard of in other parts of the world). However, in as much as everybody treats Zoë as a woman, I suppose one can make the case that she is Trans woman physically if not psychologically. Anyway, this is a digression from the main issue here which is what this episode tells us (if anything) about Hathaway's sexuality.

None of this episode's main action tells us anything clearly about Hathaway of course, except that his familiarity with Will McEwan's adult friends seems to suggest that there is more to it than meets the eye. Hathaway claims that his adult interaction with Will was limited to a single incident during his time at the seminary but the fact that people like Jonjo Read know Hathaway suggests that this isn't the whole truth. It seems unlikely that a homophobic but straight young trainee priest would have mixed with Will and his friends. It's entirely possible that a questioning or self-denying young trainee priest might have. As I said earlier, I don't know if Hathaway is supposed to be genuinely attracted to Zoë, rather than tries to bond with her as they share a profound grief and guilt over the death of Will.

The more interesting part in this episode is the _'Loaded' and Yorkie Bars_ sequence where Hathaway makes what seems to be an excellent point to Lewis: that sexual orientation is not dependant on nor a predictor of certain behaviours. However, later on the writers of this episode completely undermine themselves by repeating this conversation between James and Lewis non-verbally. Many people see this as final confirmation that Hathaway is straight, but that doesn't really make much sense in context: he'd have no reason to be coy about it during the earlier conversation if he were straight, as opposed to Bi or Demi etc. It also doesn't make any sense that girlie mags and Yorkie Bars are to be taken as a sign of heterosexuality in the last scene when Hathaway had explicitly told Lewis only days before that they were not. I don't really know what to make of the episode, it's melodrama worthy of a soap opera; and it muddies the issue of Hathaway's sexuality rather than clarifies it.

_**Anyway, so I'd love to know your thoughts on canon James's sexual orientation, what the stupid Yorkie Bar scene at the end of S2E7 'Life born of fire' meant to you and what you think really happened to James as a child at Crevecoeur.** _

Footnote:

With regard to "the not-gays", it's a descriptor created by independent film-maker Mike Stoklasa (Red Letter Media) when he was describing poorly-constructed and clumsy scenes inserted gratuitously into movies where evidently the production team has decided that the sexuality of a character is too ambiguous and needs to be established as completely heterosexual.  
LINK = https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=notgays


End file.
